Introduction The focus on the prevention of ill-treatment in prison The responsibilities placed upon prison services are considerable. Charged with securing the safety of society by incarcerating those deemed most dangerous, expected to help reform and rehabilitate those who have offended against the criminal law, and required to hold ever-increasing numbers of detainees in a prison estate that may often be in need of urgent repair, prison staff and managers are called upon to do the near-impossible: to ensure that detention conditions and prison arrangements respect the dignity of each and every prisoner. Public expectations of what prison services will achieve are often contradictory: prison as punishment, or imprisonment in order to rehabilitate and to reform? Other considerations exist: pre-trial detainees deserve the protection of the presumption of innocence; and instead of reforming the prisoner, it is now accepted that loss of liberty inevitably carries with it negative consequences for physical and mental health as well as for employment and community ties. Prison regimes, detention facilities and health services are now expected to try to help address these consequences. In Europe, the old adage that individuals are sent to prison as punishment rather than for punishment has now been supplemented by a further maxim: that prisoners retain all civil rights other than those that are incompatible with the very fact of loss of liberty. Prisoners retain their human rights, and the scope of these rights is increasing. For example, a plethora of decisions and judgments of the European Court of Human Rights has helped spell out the content of rights relating to communication with the outside world and Combating ill-treatment in prison ► Page 6